Art heist minus art

July 6, 2020 5:51 PM

A short comic about the unusual 2018 art theft involving 'A View of Hampstead Heath' by John Constable - notable because the thieves never even touched the painting (SL Bloomberg).
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts (17 comments total)

hah! That's a complication situation from a relatively simple crime.
posted by suelac at 5:59 PM on July 6, 2020

hah! That's a complication situation from a relatively simple crime.

Yeah, the sheer tangle that has resulted from what seems to be a basic spearphish, albeit an extremely well timed one.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:08 PM on July 6, 2020

I feel like that if I was about to wire 3 million dollars somewhere that if someone suddenly emailed me a new bank that I might call them up to confirm.
posted by tavella at 6:44 PM on July 6, 2020 [21 favorites]

"guten tag, this Jerome from Nane de, la Franci: Bern...the e- mail instructions are just a precaution, this hit send now"

I 💎 be this post, this art stuff, like Phyllis Diller getting her jewels robbed, twice.
posted by clavdivs at 8:48 PM on July 6, 2020

I read a lot of horror stories about similarly stolen down payments for houses back when we were looking. Worst case you lose $XXk, which was probably a large portion of your savings, and your new house.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 11:45 PM on July 6, 2020

I just bought a house in the UK and that side of it was interesting.

Everything you pay goes through your solicitor, including the downpayment etc. When you agree to start the purchase process, they give you their bank details, then tell you that they absolutely will not give them again at any point throughout the process, unless you see them in person, and the details will never change for the duration of the transaction.

Towards the end, before issuing the final invoice, they made me read their bank details over the phone to confirm I had them right.

Quite a simple way to avoid getting spearphished.
posted by benoliver999 at 12:36 AM on July 7, 2020 [7 favorites]

I feel like that if I was about to wire 3 million dollars somewhere that if someone suddenly emailed me a new bank that I might call them up to confirm.

Yeah, that's some pretty spectacular lack of sophistication for an organization that does transactions in the millions of dollars - maybe the comic is oversimplifying, but you would expect a payment of this magnitude would have several pairs of eyeballs on it.
posted by each day we work at 12:42 AM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

A bit more information [Bloomberg] [ArtNet], without the lovely drawings.
posted by chavenet at 2:45 AM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's very focused, knowledgeable, and sophisticated for a spearphish - it's not just some random email. Even if you had randomly hacked one of or both party's emails, you'd presumably have to have some background in art dealing as well, as well as knowledge of history of the deal.
posted by carter at 3:38 AM on July 7, 2020

Also the Bloomberg article, in a garbled series of sentences, quotes the museum's lawyer as alleging that the art dealer's negotiators (another group of people here??) knew about the emails from Hong Kong at the time but did not intervene:

The art dealer’s negotiators were looped in to some of the emails between the museum and the hackers but they said and did nothing to correct the impression that the emails came from Dickinson, the museum’s lawyer Gideon Shirazi told a London High Court.

“Silence would give rise to an implied representation,” he said. “By saying nothing, they said everything.”
posted by carter at 4:02 AM on July 7, 2020

Even if you had randomly hacked one of or both party's emails, you'd presumably have to have some background in art dealing as well, as well as knowledge of history of the deal.

I think it’s likely they were targeted. Museums buy art. The thieves may not have targeted this specific piece of art to begin with - they might have just been looking for any art sale. But once they were in the network and could read the correspondence, they could see that they had hit the jackpot.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:15 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Echoing what benoliver999 said; this scam became prevalent enough in UK house conveyancing that most law firms I now deal with have a standard email footer including a warning that they will never email new bank details to you, or even a pop-up on their web site to that effect.
posted by Major Clanger at 4:39 AM on July 7, 2020

I'm wondering why they can't follow a money trail from the HK bank the funds were sent to. How did the hackers get that money out?
posted by storybored at 7:29 AM on July 7, 2020

My crime-novel level understanding is that you split it up in smaller chunks and funnel it through multiple other accounts in varying unhelpful jurisdictions. Ideally at some point you convert it to cash, gold, or something else of value that can disappear. Of course you lose some along the way in fees, bribes and the like.

The idea is that tracking it down will take enough time and effort that you are long gone by the time the owner reaches the end of the trail.
posted by each day we work at 8:39 AM on July 7, 2020

Is there no such thing as an escrow agent in the art world?
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:12 AM on July 7, 2020

I was talking with a guy at work here in California and I said a few things about Hampstead Heath, and he had a very confused look on his face. It turns out that he thought I was saying "Hamster Teeth", like "I used to live near hamster teeth. It was a wonderful thing to look out of my bathroom window and see hamster teeth right there.".
posted by w0mbat at 2:23 PM on July 7, 2020 [5 favorites]

I had to transfer £400 to an estate agent for a deposit on a flat. I called them and read them their account number and sorting code two times, getting confirmation every digit was right, before I moved the money. They just don't make violins small enough.
posted by voiceofreason at 8:10 AM on July 8, 2020